


Merle

by aderyn



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: mated pairs and murder, what else
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-12
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-12-05 03:08:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/718169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He’s dreaming monogamy and murder, a flash in the optic chiasma, a spike of acetylcholine, the hemispheres of bird-brains undivided.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Merle

**Author's Note:**

> Dark streets and blackbirds in the garden for [quarryquest](http://quarryquest.livejournal.com/).  
> [Cover by quarryquest!](https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/VAb3ptvVzfaTtpcTv3RmK9MTjNZETYmyPJy0liipFm0?feat=directlink)

 

The blackbird prefers a difficult nest--the hawthorn, the holly, the ivy, the bright-berried pyracantha. Its song is a wonder, Sherlock thinks, hands locked—warning, courtship--such logic in the economies of threat and affection.  A wonder.

*******  
The street’s dusky, outlandish with flares, the head of the blackbird and its bright beak, their clothes the colour of impending rain.

Black is the absence of. Not really, Sherlock thinks, not really. He’s got the hand of a dead man in his hand and the hand of a live man on his back. There’s the fox, the cat, the accipiter, the predator gone in a crouch, just there--

“Sherlock,” John says, “come home.”

He’ll go eventually, sleep the slow-wave, one hemisphere awake, the vigilance a kind of love.

*****  
** He’s dreaming monogamy and murder, a flash in the optic chiasma, a spike of acetylcholine, the hemispheres of bird-brains undivided--

“Sherlock,” John shouts from the stair, “we've got crime.”

“John,” Sherlock shouts from a wall, “we’ve got crime.”

There’s a bow in it, a call in the unlocking of arms, response in the unshrugging of coats, the sleep-flying out and in while the singers in the back gardens cry _don’t they don’t they._

The pair in the window knows what they do.

The sleepers in the garden won't say, the sweet prerogative of the bird.

**Author's Note:**

> Blackbird: Turdus merula, ouzel, ousel , merl, merle
> 
> I do not know which to prefer,  
> The beauty of inflections  
> Or the beauty of innuendoes,  
> The blackbird whistling  
> Or just after.—Wallace Stevens, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird”
> 
>    
> [Quarryquest's post on the blackbirds of 221B](http://quarryquest.livejournal.com/735692.html)  
> [Recording of blackbird song](http://sounds.bl.uk/Environment/British-wildlife-recordings/022M-W1CDR0001524-1900V0)  
> [Blackbird singing on a rooftop](http://www.flickr.com/photos/funch/2497905540/)  
> [Blackbirds of London](http://www.rspb.org.uk/news/321838-londons-changing-biodiversity)  
> [Unihemispheric slow-wave sleep in birds](http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9902/03/birds.eye/)


End file.
